Well, we know what Chick would say, but then that wasn't hard to predict:

But he's not the only one:

Halloween has become a multi-billion dollar industry. Halloween as we know it didn't exist in 1950. Before 1966. it was benign pointless excuse for children to parade door to door collecting free candy and an annual re-run of "It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown."

However, the 1966 Madison Avenue marketing blitz called "The Year of the Monster" glamorized Halloween as a 'lifestyle'.

The blitz included a plethora of gory toys, glamor sustained through television shows and movies, including two prime time sitcoms, "The Adams Family", and "The Munsters". Halloween as we know it was created by interests which we now identify as 'Illuminati' and Satanic. I did live through it, so I have no doubt about it.

American children used to be protected by laws which no longer exist. They were protected by families and normal society. Before television it wasn't so easy for self avowed witches to get inside their heads. The Illuminati recognized Halloween as the opportunity to do that.-Halloween is Christmas for Satanists

2. Wait behind the door until some people come. When they get near the door, jump out, wearing a costume, and holding a bag, and yell, "Trick or Treat!" Look at them, scratch your head, and act confused.

3. Fill a briefcase with marbles and crackers. Write on it, "Top Secret" in big letters. When trick-or-treaters come, look around suspiciously, say, "It's about time you got here," give them the briefcase, and quickly shut the door.

4. Get about 30 people to wait in your living room. When trick-or-treaters come to the door, say, "Come in." When they do, have everyone yell, "Surprise!!!" Act like it's a surprise party.

6. Get everyone who comes to the door to come in and see if they can figure out what's wrong with your dishwasher. Insist that it makes an unnatural "whirring" sound.

I know this is big lettering, but it's a big night around here (even though our arch nemesis, The Commentator, tried to declare the fun over already...curse you T.C.!)

No, my little evil friends, it's just beginning! Yes, we may fall asleep in front of the T.V. while trying to watch horror movies before we get to all of our planned scary posts, and then make up a lame excuse as to why we posted them on the dreaded "All Saints Day" instead, but never fear (no, please do fear, I misspoke) we'll be here, even if we look this small in your eyes...

For years, Wonderful World of Disney fans have been clamoring for the company to digitally remaster "Disney's Halloween Treat."

This wonderful special was aired in the 1980's around Halloween, and featured spooky clips from their feature movies and cartoon shorts.

If Disney spent the time to clean up the footage and restore the audio, it would look something like this:

Sounds like there almost could be a joke in that about to happen, except it actually happened this morning.

I am very involved in local issues like preservation of local historical and natural attractions, open carry, women's shelter, food bank, and the animal shelter. I also try and shop local and that includes the local coffee shop, while I will go to chain shops, I try and visit the local small shops as much as possible, our local joe dispensary also happens to be open carry friendly.

I put on my recent new retention holster and new pistol and drove over to the coffee shop with no other intent outside of juicing up with the darkest brew possible. Inside the shop none other than the local Sheriff and the local pagan group honcho waving me over to the table. Possibly surprising to some because of my anti-statist attitude, I have great relations with many of the local constabulary and shoot with most of them at the range in town.

The local pagan grand poo-ba also happens to open carry so the three way conversation was about new pistols and a bit about the new retention holster and then the poo-ba invites us to the festival on the mountain. The Sheriff is a Christian and I don't think he was too enthusiastic about dancing around in the dark with torches but I figured there wasn't anything better to do on spook's night.

I have always had the pro-pagan or at least pagan-friendly attitude once I gave up on Christianity. Most of the pagans I have known are friendly, helpful, fun folks with more than a few nerds and geeks mixed in for good measure. Not that nerds present a problem, if any of you guys out there don't know, nerd and geek girls can be HOT! We have some skimpy costumes to look forward to viewing this evening.

As I type this it is just into trick-or-treat time and my wife is not willing to go anywhere until she fills up the local beggars with enough chocolate to cause a corn-holio reaction. I would just take off early but I would get my wife's cowgirl book in the butt and the pagan romp does not start until 9 pm and is likely to go on until dawn anyway. My wife was as enthusiastic as the Sheriff but thought the Kids would think it was a hoot, and they convinced a batch of their teen friends to go along.

Why don't atheists or Christians have parties like the pagans, or do pagans become pagans for the parties? You won't see atheists dancing sky-clad near a fire in the woods, and Christian events never seemed to be quite as open and free. Why are the pagans so intent on having a useless good time with trappings that are such good additions to a good party?

It's Halloween. Another year has flown by, like a witch on her broom in the shy sky above where you're never looking, until it's too late, and the doom is upon you. I have never seen a "ghost",or least I don't think I have. I could be wrong about that. I've seen strange things, that's for sure. For example, one time I saw this guy buy a non-alcoholic "beer" at a bar I was at for an Elvis impersonator contest. My Filipino friend was in the competition, and though he had once been a professional cruise ship singer, and was fantastic at the piano bars I used to frequent with him, and even had one hell of an Elvis voice when he sang Elvis songs, he refused to dress in a white sequined jumpsuit, preferring his rather pedestrian dress pants and sport jacket. Needless to say, I thought his sound was the best Elvis imitation, but a white guy in full Fat Elvis regalia won the popular vote (maybe his sideburns helped too).

The Winning Look

But as I was saying, I still don't think I've seen a ghost, not even the ghost of Elvis Presley. But, one Halloween, when I was in Florida (I lived down near Fort Lauderdale for a period when I was a child) my sister and I were out trick or treating with some friends, and as we walked down a dark street, we saw what appeared to be people dressed in sheets on the roof of a nearby house. I still swear to this day that one of them levitated and flew around and then landed again, and it wasn't no prop because it started to laugh real loud and you could see its belly moving like Santa Claus going Ho, Ho, Ho, only this wasn't a friendly laugh, it was evil, and we ran like the wind out of there.

I didn't think about ghosts on a personal level much until years later, when my sister, one evening when I was visiting her apartment and her two kids were running around like little devils, decided to mention some strange things to me. We were playing Scrabble and as usual I was winning spectacularly (or maybe that's just how I want to remember it) and we got to talking about the supernatural and paranormal. Maybe my Art Bell listening had prompted the paranormal topic, but when the discussion arrived at ghosts, she said that was the one thing she did believe in. I listened in wonder, because my sister is a near atheist and normally would dismiss anything that smacks of the spooky as nonsense.

So, I sat as she told her tale.

The place she had lived in previously was old and had the feel of ancientness about it. There was one extra room that was being used as a kind of playroom for the kids (two boys) and it was filled with toys that were scattered all over the floor. One day, as my sister was vacuuming, as she made her way down the hallway, she noticed that the door to the "playroom" was closed. Thinking the kids might be up to mischief, she went and slowly opened it. There on the floor sat a child, what appeared to be a young boy, and he had unusual, old looking clothes on and was wearing a strange hat. She thought at first it was the youngest of her offspring, and she spoke to him, saying "Casey?". Then the real Casey answered from behind her "What, Mommy?". She turned to him, then back to the room, and the child with the odd attire and head gear had disappeared!

She told of another time at the same location, when she was reading in bed and the kids were already asleep, when she heard footsteps coming down the hallway to her bedroom. her door was still open, and as she looked up from her book, she saw a man in overalls and a straw hat standing there in her doorway. As soon as she looked at him, he literally evaporated into thin air.

My sister them moved to Texas for a short time, and while there was renting a house. I came to help her get settled, and she started saying that lights and water faucets were coming on all by themselves. I didn't believe it, until one night when I was perusing a copy of Penthouse magazine in private in the bedroom I'd been given, when the lamp in the corner of the room came on all by itself. There was no timer or anything attached to it, so I was spooked. I then got up and hid my porn, went to the bathroom, and as I stood there, I thought I suddenly heard the water in the bathtub start to run. Maybe the kids had left it on, but I was sure I hadn't heard it when I'd entered the bathroom.

After that, we all slept in the living room together and kept the television on all night for the remainder of my stay.

No more ghosts entered my life after that, except for my dreams of my grandmother. She died after suffering a stroke, and at the viewing I cried my eyes out over her open casket. Everyone else was reminiscing of all the "good times", but the finality of it all struck me horribly, and for weeks afterward, I walked around looking at everyone I saw differently. I realized that we are all ephemeral, phantoms without solid reality. That we are all, in fact, ghosts.

Jack Conway, for those who have been sleeping or who just don't follow politics at all, is the guy running against Rand Paul's head stomping movement in Kentucky (and yeah, I really should stop mentioning that incident, cause I still want Rand Paul to win; any candidate who gets criticized by his opponent for advocating drug legalization -or at least allowing the individual states to do so- deserves to beat the statist jerk he's running against). Conway, when asked his position on abortion, said "I think at the end of the day, I probably come down on the libertarian view on this, that government ought not to be telling women what to do". -Libertarian label in vogue even with Rand Paul’s opponent

Too bad Conway doesn't care about having a consistent philosophy when it comes to the state telling people what to do with their own bodies.

I actually found this quite helpful. Sometimes you just want a simple way to search Google's Blogger. At the link below, you'll find ways to search Blogger specifically, such as finding other blogspot.com bloggers by their interests, or by geographical region; that could be useful if you'd like to know if there are bloggers near you that share your passion for prunes and the resulting intestinal distress, for example, or you could just use it to find other Rand Paul head-stomping fans whose blogs you can follow.

One that I really like is finding a Blogger blogger (did ya like that? I've always wanted to slip that in somewhere) by their profile name. That's especially useful when you want to find that blog by "Dave" but can't remember the name of it, and then realize that just Googling the word "Dave" won't help you. I also use it when the rat fink named Dave stops following SE, then I take my revenge and find "Dave's" blog and stop following him. That doesn't work if I wasn't also following Dave, of course, but if I was kind enough to follow the loser back, it feels so gooood to stop!

The public worries about other toxic products coming from China, but willing ingests who knows what from that same toxic source, in their drinking water.

Workers at a US water treatment works were amazed and disgusted at what they were expected to mix in to the domestic tap water supply in their region. So much so they refused to add it and released footage of it.

The 44-year-old pension-fund manager from Texas, who spoke recently at a gold conference in Berlin, caused a stir among the roomful of gold aficionados. His provocation: A book that predicts the price of the precious metal could soar to $10,000 an ounce, more than seven times its current price.

Like those who once boldly predicted $1,000 Internet stocks and a 36000 Dow Jones Industrial Average, Mr. McGuire is a lone voice among mainstream investors suggesting such an outsize price jump in gold's price.

MYSELF: All right. Here’s the deal. I don’t care if people want to buy guns, but here’s what I see. I see a large political lobbying group funded by arms manufacturers that has its hand in more biased research than a 1950s cigarette conglomerate. I see tens of thousands of people dying every year from ridiculous gun violence. I also see a drug war that has criminalized dangerous substances, which has only made them more dangerous. I think drugs should be legal, just as guns should be legal, but I don’t think we should be encouraging people to buy guns or do drugs by glamorizing them or pretending they are perfectly safe. I think each carries a very real calculated risk, and guns in particular have the added nuisance of affecting innocent individuals who have no say in the decision making process. If heroin could just go off and accidentally OD your neighbor, I would probably be as opposed to drugs as I am to guns. As it is, I would say I’m completely apathetic to one’s choice of doing drugs, and I would discourage someone from buying a gun unless they really planned to use it in some constructive fashion, like hunting, target shooting, or even going to the shooting range a few times a year.

ME: Sorry, I nodded off during your convoluted answer there.

MYSELF: I don’t get why it’s so hard to understand that I can dislike something and not want to impose my views on others. Am I supposed to fight to make guns illegal if I think they are a stupid thing to purchase?

ME: That’s how I was raised.

MYSELF: Me too, but you can overcome what you’ve been taught. You can look at things differently. You don’t have to limit yourself to the ideas of the past or adhere to stereotypes.

ME: What a fucking hypocrite, whining about stereotypes. You have got to make some of the most broadly ignorant comments of any blogger I’ve ever seen.

MYSELF: Was it an exaggeration I made for the sake of humor?

ME: It’s hard to tell with you, because you think everything you write is hilarious. Never mind the fact that if you were half as funny as you think you are, people would actually read your blog. Instead, you have to piggyback on someone else’s success just to get a teeny-tiny, miniscule readership of a few more people.

MYSELF: I think that’s a demeaning thing to say about SE. Insult me all you want, but Nikk’s been nothing but infinitely patient and tolerant with us.

ME: If you had listened to Me in the first place, we would have a little respect around here.

MYSELF: What are you talking about?

ME: I told you no one cares about your political ideas. I keep saying: make fun of some liberal stuff and just lie low. People love when you make fun of groups like PETA and other liberal ideas.

MYSELF: Right. Like that “Pro-Bully” crap, where you basically made fun of gay people for ten minutes? You know, our wife read that.

ME: Only half of it. She was too disgusted to finish it.

MYSELF: And that doesn’t bother you?

ME: It bothers you, not Me. I’m looking out for number one, here, and SE is popular because it taps into an angry torrent of anti-government rage.

MYSELF: I think Nikk’s pro-active stance in the blog community, his tendency to follow everyone, his shout outs to other blogs, and basically the fact that he’s been doing all of this longer than we have is the reason he’s more successful as a blogger.

ME: Whatever.

MYSELF: I’m pretty sure if you asked him, he’d say he puts in a lot of work on SE. Plus, it has it’s own real URL, not a blogspot one.

ME: Right, cause you’re cheap.

MYSELF: More like poor.

ME: You can’t shell out twenty bucks for a domain name?

MYSELF: No, we can’t. That would be a little irresponsible at this point.

ME: Sure, you can’t shell out what you paid for delivery pizza last night.

MYSELF: I don’t know, why did I mock people I was on the football team with, but not the kid in a wheelchair?

ME: Fuck me! Black Jesus is up on his cross, huh? Poor Obama… does it make you wanna cry? Do you need a tissue?

MYSELF: Right. Obama inherits the worst situation –

ME: Poor victim Obama, wah wah wah.

MYSELF: Hey, have you heard of the new George W. Bush value menu at McDonalds?

ME: No…

MYSELF: You order everything on the menu, and make the guy in line after you pay for it.

ME: Is that how you deal with everything, pretending you’re funny?

MYSELF: Pretty much, I call it the third way.

ME: Really, when did you start calling it that?

MYSELF: Like… five seconds ago when I pulled the idea fresh out of my ass. Most people, when confronted with opposition, either try to ignore it, or they angrily oppose it. I prefer to mock it, and laugh.

ME: You find that to be effective?

MYSELF: Well… it effectively keeps me from taking stuff so seriously that I give myself neuroses, and it seems equally as effective at chipping away at someone as any sort of angry response. Which is to say… completely ineffective.

ME: So why do it?

MYSELF: What am I going to get by taking things seriously?

ME: Respect?

MYSELF: Even if I had anyone’s respect, I wouldn’t know what to do with it.

ME: Not even respect from Me?

MYSELF: Why would I want self-respect?

ME: So people will take you seriously?

MYSELF: Again with the seriousness. You know what? The world is serious. Serious stuff happens all the time. The world sucks, and a fair amount of it is our fault.

ME: What?

MYSELF: I mean, like the collective “our,” as in all of humanity. Sure, nature is a bitch, but people do a fair job of making each other miserable. If I have the chance to make one person laugh, or giggle, or even just smile, I’m going to take it. Whenever you try to make someone laugh, you run the risk of failing. It’s a basic law of action: if you try, you might fail. But you know what? Looking like a fool who is unsuccessfully trying to be funny is a risk I’m more than willing to take. If 99 out of 100 of my jokes bombed, I would still go for it.

ME: You gotta make it timeless. Those stupid stereotypes will be obsolete in a few years when they rebrand the depressed kids in black as something else. On the other hand, there will always be high school girls cutting themselves.

MYSELF: That’s kind of sad.

ME: Aww, nothing sadder than seeing a clown cry.

MYSELF: Water rolling down my back…

ME: Oh, you’re crying while leaning backwards now?

MYSELF: Why the hostility from you? You’re always pissed off.

ME: You never let Me out in public.

MYSELF: I wonder why.

ME: I don’t appreciate being suppressed and only getting to talk online. I want to get into some arguments in person, and beat the shit out of people.

MYSELF: You have got to stop watching television. In the real world, fighting doesn’t get you anything but a summons for assault.

ME: Think about it, man. If everyone realizes they can protect themselves, the cops become obsolete.

MYSELF: What about the disabled and elderly?

ME: Fuck ’em.

MYSELF: I’m sure people will be lined up around the block to do just that if there are no police. Why would you assume everyone can take care of themselves?

ME: If you can’t take care of yourself, you don’t deserve to live.

MYSELF: That doesn’t make any sense. By your logic, a great mind like Stephen Hawking’s would just go to waste. Unforgiving cruelty masquerading as pseudo-Darwinism is not in the best interests of a society.

ME: Who gives a shit about society, you’re young and strong now. You could beat the shit out of any of those intellectual douchebags who criticize everything from their ivory towers.

MYSELF: That’s not how Darwinism works. If you try to adhere to the same evolutionary standards as animals, namely that only the physically strong survive, then you cannot expect to achieve any more than animals have achieved. In point of fact, strength amounts to nearly nothing in the advancement of humanity. We have advanced beyond the point where muscle can provide progress, and we are clearly at a point where one’s ability to think creatively and adapt to changing norms far outweigh the benefit any physical prowess may provide.

ME: Tell that to pro basketball players with 30 kids by 30 different mothers.

MYSELF: I think you’re exaggerating a bit, but even if you aren’t, the evolutionary success of their children will be diminished by the lack of a two-parent unit during child rearing, and the ultimate success of the genetic offspring of promiscuous fathers is greatly reduced.

ME: Unless you’re Barack Obama, of course.

MYSELF: One example does not disprove the trend.

ME: I’ll give you one more chance to criticize Obama before I just label you a Democrat whore for life.

MYSELF: Well if you have a gun to my head, I would point out he’s a spineless negotiator who doesn’t understand that you don’t initially come to the table with a compromise, you come with what you want (or better yet, more), and then agree on a compromise. His appeasement mentality has resulted in having to compromise on compromises, time after time. He’s trying too hard to court moderates and Republicans while completely alienating the people who would actually vote for him. What’s worse, after all this wishy-washy bullshit, he has the balls to go on every public forum that will have him, media whore that he is, and tell liberals to quit criticizing him and show a little support. He’s even got Joe Biden telling liberals to “stop whining.” That isn’t the attitude you’re supposed to have towards your constituency.

Gerald Celente of the Trends Research Institute at TrendsResearch.com joins The Corbett Report to discuss the ongoing foreclosure crisis in the American real estate industry. He discusses the criminal mentality that makes these frauds possible and how people can protect themselves by unplugging themselves from the system.

I'm on another of my semi-successful weight loss campaigns. So, the other day I decide not to take a regular lunch to work, so as not to consume my usual 3 or 4 thousand workday calories. Something else to hold me over would have to do, so I looked around and found my recent dollar store purchase of a box of prunes. The box seemed to be trying to avoid scaring off young people (like my youthful self) by proclaiming that these were "dried plums", which somehow makes them sound like friendly giant-sized raisins.

I thought the plums I'd stuffed into my coat pocket were just there as insurance, as my overwhelming will power would fight off the inevitable hunger pangs that would result from not bringing a lunch to work. But I got hungry...

Oh the pain!!! I ate the whole goddamned box of prunes! I was just trying to ease a little of my hunger, but I got greedy and kept eating the evil shriveled up little bastards! I tried to look okay, but my face was giving me away. I had gas building up inside me. I had to get up and go to the bathroom. Meanwhile I was trying hard not to fart in front of everyone as I got up and left the room. This nightmare repeated several more times throughout the day.

In the 18th century, Britain shipped prisoners to Australia, but there was a problem. Sometimes as few as 2/3 of prisoners arrived alive, and those who survived were beaten, malnourished, and often on the verge of death. Sure, they were criminals, but it was still seen as a travesty.

The British government commissioned private ship captains to make the voyages, and they imposed many restrictions and regulations on them in an effort to increase prisoner survival. Ships were required to staff a doctor for the prisoners. Fruit was given to the captains to prevent scurvy among the passengers. Inspections were done at British ports the ship stopped at along the way.

The captains got paid more, in the hopes that more money would discourage them from selling the fruit and medicine in Australia. Priests even tried to appeal to the captains’ morality. As anyone who knows anything about businessmen might guess, none of this worked. The incentive was always there to minimize costs and maximize profits.

What measure was taken to finally bring the average survival rate of prisoners from 75-80% to 99%? In 1793, captains were paid only for prisoners who survived the journey to Australia. Rather than being paid for how many prisoners walked on the boat in England, captains were paid for how many walked off in Australia.

The first shipment of three ships full of 422 prisoners under this policy arrived in Australia with only 1 dead prisoner.

When I hear people on the right complain about regulation, I think of this example. I think: “Yes, sometimes in the pursuit of an answer, we come up with failed solutions, but this doesn’t mean we must stop trying to find an answer.”

What is most reassuring, however, is that the solution is often very simple. What you can’t do, however, is wait for those who profit off the suffering of others to freely decide to do the right thing.

Why no intelligent discussion can ever occur in the hellscape of politics...

Consider this an epistle to my progressive/liberal/social-democratic friends:

On Nov 2, all over the United States, polling places will open to allow people to vote. It’s a good bet that those who have a vested interest in state power will use those polling places to vote for one of the competing politicians, each of whom presumably has their own plan for the exercise in livestock management known as “government”. In truth however, most of these politicians act as mere symbolism – fetishes to draw the rest of the masses into the voting booth. This one is “for hard working middle class families” , that one is for “plain old folks who have had enough” – they use their various cultural touchstones, carefully crafted to appeal to certain demographics, and yet it means very little in terms of actual policy. The plan is largely already set in motion and carries too much momentum to be stopped by the mechanism by which it is rubber-stamped.

The “Democratic Party” says they don’t want to lose their majority in Congress, but what have they done with it? They had a majority of the House of Representatives, a super-majority in the Senate, and the Presidency. And yet, they have seemed to struggle and compromise on nearly every point on their so-called agenda. What stops them? Well there are a lot of empty words thrown about like “bi-partisanship” and “Republican obstructionism”. But technically, they should have been able to pass almost their entire agenda without compromise or hesitation, if they wanted to. Of course, that’s a big big big “if” right there. What more do they need? How much more perfect of a situation do they need to actually represent the people who elected them, if they want to? Given basically complete power, they followed nearly the same plan, in all the ways that count, that a Republican administration would have. More corporatism, more war, no relief for the middle class or working poor. No advancement of civil liberties.

One must begin to wonder where the real power is, because it certainly must have little or nothing to do with how many people in the federal government have a “D” or “R” in front of their names on C-SPAN. The same reason that the Democrats, having taken over the entire federal government, in effect, have changed little or nothing in the overall plan of that government’s operation is the same reason why I have very little fear of the Republican Party gaining nominal control of the self-same government. If the best we can hope for from the Democratic Party is to move the plan forward somewhat more slowly than the Republican Party, then clearly, another approach is warranted. No matter how many “D”s you elect anywhere, forever and ever, the plan will not be stopped or even halted.

In California, they have a small experiment in Direct Democracy known as the proposition system. Unlike the normal representative process, this system actually has a chance to change things, for better or worse. One of the propositions on the ballot this year is Proposition 19. This involves the full-on legalization of small amounts of marijuana under very circumscribed conditions. Despite those restrictions, this act would do a great deal of good for a great number of people and would only harm certain sectors of the plutocracy, who happen to be its major opponents.

Recently the Democratic US Attorney General, Eric Holder, announced that the U.S. government will attempt to “vigorously enforce” federal prohibitions on marijuana if Prop. 19 passes. As a member of the federal government, he is a slave to the plan, like all the rest. The backwards illogic masquerading as “reasoning” put forth as an excuse for this opposition is, in part, that it will strengthen the large drug cartels. Of course, as anyone who has studied either economics or history knows, quite the opposite will result. According to a Rand Corp study on the matter (as if we needed one, but hey) Prop 19 will cut into the cartels’ overall profits anywhere from 3 to 23 percent, and could drive them almost entirely out of the US market. So one might begin to wonder if these wealthy drug cartels, who operate ostensibly in the dark without a trace, might be funding some of the opposition to this Proposition. In fact, it would only stand to reason that they are funding the overall “war on drugs”. And seeing this, one might begin to understand that this same mechanism could be at work behind the entire plan itself.

Such efforts of course are largely futile and laughable. The federal government can’t afford to flood the whole state of California with DEA agents, and they can’t force the hand of local governments that will quickly see the benefits of Prop 19 on their local economies and citizenry. Officials who try to subvert it will become very unpopular, and those who staunchly support it will become very popular, largely. However, what the federal government can do, and what they will do, is selectively enforce the federal laws. Those people who find their way on to an “enemies list” or are inconvenient or particularly troublesome to the powers that be, will be more likely to find themselves visited by the DEA. As before, this is a microcosm for all centralized law enforcement. In fact this is precisely the mechanism behind most of the financial scandals we have experienced, including much of the “subprime/bailout” nastiness recently.

Seeing all this: the futility of representation, the hidden hand of plutocracy behind regulation and the selective nature of enforcement – even if you don’t know how to improve the situation yet, at least you can begin to understand that this system such as it is can never get you what you want. Knowing that, you might begin to look for other ways that you can.-Anna Morgenstern at Center for a Stateless Society

'As the author of The Case for Impeachment (St. Martin's Press, 2006), I never thought in my lifetime that I would see a president reach the depth of moral decay and depravity of President George W. Bush, but sad to say, our current president, Barack Obama, has managed to do it, and what makes it worse, as a former Constitutional law professor, he knows better.'

Get used to the idea of ditching the luxuries you had in your former life. Gone are the credit cards, the convenience cards and loyalty cards, even simple things like a video rental card. Pay cash for everything and don't use anything that could link you new life and your plans to your old life. Don't check out books about Chile from your local library or buy them with a credit card. Don't use a credit card or frequent flier miles to book a flight out of the country. Your goal in everything you do is to minimize the number of connections between your old life and your new life. Whenever you undertake an interaction with another person or business, ask yourself "Is this the least traceable method I could use?" Paying cash for a cup of coffee at an old coffee shop? Obscure. Paying with a credit card for a cup of coffee at an airport kiosk under the eye of four different security cameras? Not stealthy in the least. Cash is king

I try to use cash as much as possible anyway, but think about everyone you know and how many are just so used to constantly using their debit or credit cards for every little transaction. I mean, I'm in Quiznos the other afternoon getting myself a $5.00 sub I didn't need, and ready with a five and one dollar bill in my hands to pay, and every last one of my fellow sub-humans was paying with plastic, for a meal that only cost a few bucks. Get a little cash out for God's sake, and then you also won't be over-spending all the time. That goddamned card makes it so easy to deplete your bank account (come to think of it, you probably shouldn't be leaving any of your money in the hands of the bankster crooks either).

One reason the state ultimately wants a cashless society is so surveillance is easier. Anything that makes it possible to hide from the eyes of the tyrants in government is something that needs to be curtailed or abolished, in their view. Of course, cashless would still leave you with nearly worthless electronic Federal Reserve funny money. Every once in a while you'll see a story about some poor slob on the run from the "law" and the "justice" system (in quotes because there is almost nothing just about it) who stupidly uses a credit or debit card along their escape route, and is thereby tracked and then caught by the dirty state criminals known as cops. Don't be so dumb, Mr. Fugitive. Use cash!

The state of Israel is founded on racism and religious discrimination and yet wants to pretend that it numbers among the truly democratic nations of the world.

One foreign worker said he would rather die than be returned to Africa and that the proposal meant Israel would sell the migrants to African nations.

"This isn't the first time that the idea of deporting the migrant laborers has been raised," sources close to the prime minister were quoted...as saying.

In August, the Israeli parliament approved the deportation of 400 children and their families whom Netanyahu likewise considered a "tangible threat" to Israel.-Israel slammed for 'human trafficking'

Netanyahu claims that these immigrants threaten the "Jewish and democratic character of Israel", but, it can't be both of those that are "threatened". If Israel resembled any kind of "democratic" country, it could and would not discriminate on the basis of "Jewishness", nor have a policy of maintaining a "Jewish character". No semblance of sanity will return to that region until the state of Israel is dissolved and abolished. Israel was founded on an evil principle, and only evil can continue to come from it unless or until that foundation is altered.

And the whole idea that Jews needed a safe haven of their very own after the horror of the holocaust, even if true, certainly was not provided by sticking a Jewish state in the middle of millions of Arabs. It's absurd. Would you feel safer as a Jew in the United States or Israel? Hell, they should just move the whole damn country to somewhere in North America (maybe Canada can spare some land) and be done with it. Its existence as a specifically "Jewish" state would still be something to lament, but at least the rest of the world could enjoy a little more peaceful world, and have less lobbying on behalf of the U.S. Military invading Islamic countries and killing hundreds of thousands of innocents.

Have you ever noticed how sometimes you don't realize you're dreaming? You think it's real. All of my dreams used to be like that, and I don't know precisely when I noticed anything different, but I came to be able to frequently distinguish dreams from reality. For example, I once found myself in bed with Beyonce and Shakira, and they were feeding me grapes and wine and there was a huge pile of gold coins that rose to the top of the 18 foot ceiling in a corner of my 4,000 square foot marble-floored bedroom. Then one of my 200 personal assistants announced that I had just been proclaimed Ruler of Planet Earth (for life). But it was all phony and I knew it, so I couldn't enjoy it, which was actually good, because imagine the disappointment on waking up from that one.

Somehow, though, I never realize it's just a dream when I have the winning lotto numbers in my hand and the jackpot is over $100 million. Now, that's a let down when I wake up and find I'm still living in what some observant individuals would call "squalor" and extreme poverty. Nevertheless, the dream of winning the lottery shall never die! (which reminds me, I've gotta buy some tickets later today, the drawing for the $150 million jackpot is tonight).

Dreams often occur in "real time", by which I mean, you are experiencing the dream world as if it was all taking place at the same speed as real life; a dream can go on for a long time, sometimes more than 30 minutes. However, I recently had an episode of what I would call "speed dreaming", where I would have what appeared to be a whole day of experience, and then wake up to find I'd only been asleep for 3 or 4 minutes. I even had a speed dream where I was Captain Kirk for an entire episode of Star Trek, and I held the alien babe in my arms and saved the Enterprise from certain destruction (with the usual help from Scotty), the whole nine yards, in just a couple of minutes.

But before waking up this morning, I had a regular old fashioned dream, one where it all occurred in normal time and I wasn't aware I was dreaming. I also had that big let down upon waking. I was even contemplating a blog post about it all while I was dreaming.

I was in a book store, and in walked President Obama. He was dressed in just a white shirt and tie (no, he was also wearing pants; it wasn't one of those dreams) and some Ron Paul supporters and other pro-liberty folks began engaging him in conversation. Obama began to admit his many mistakes while in office, and he promised to sign a bill getting Ron Paul's books, such as End the Fed, into the hands of every American. Then he said he would pull the troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan right away, that the wars would be over before we could say Jack Robinson (Jack Robinson was actually there in the bookstore listening to all this).

I personally got him to commit to ending the income tax and the drug war and abolishing the IRS and DEA, and to make plane travel pleasant again by getting rid of those assholes in the TSA. It was also revealed in my dream that Barack Obama was a Marine war hero, but that part didn't interest me. I want an anti-war hero in the White House, not a war "hero". And that reminds me that, while I didn't vote last time, I still wanted Obama to beat that little phony John McCain, who said during the 2008 campaign: "I will not accept from Senator Obama, who did not feel it was his responsibility to serve our country in uniform, any lectures on my regard for those who did."

How is it a "responsibility" to go die on some foreign battlefield in an imperial war of aggression that has nothing to do with defending the actual home territory of the United States? And just how does that "serve" anyone, except the military-industrial complex? The real Obama deserves credit in my book for only one thing, keeping that neocon jerk out of the White House (though George W. Bush deserves most of the credit).

Anyway, I was just starting to take notes for this morning's blog post when I woke up. I know the things Obama promised in my dream are an impossible dream, but if he'd only lived up to his anti-war lies when he was lying for votes in 2008, I'd be supporting him right now and shouting "four more years, four more years!"

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully. - Richard Dawkins

Having to show any respect for religious delusion is enough to make anyone frustrated, are we angry? Some of us are, (myself included) but is the rejection of blatant harmful delusions "angry"...

Even our pathetic government must have the lapdogs who whore themselves out to become part of the corrupt, greedy, fraudulent power structure. Losers and failed lawyers who simply have no honor, the clamorous and willing lickspittles of the oligarchy. The fact that the willing lapdogs must show fealty to delusions should frustrate everyone, how can the "problems" be "fixed" when delusion is a requirement?

Hey, why can't we hand out an award to ourselves? It's not like we haven't made mistakes in handing out the world's top blog award before. The question is, are we awful enough to desevre it? Do we have the blog zeitgeist by the throat (what?). Do we reach those heights of substance and originality (yes, since Bret "Ginx" Alan joined the team, I'd say we certainly do), well, do we?

Let's us know if you think SE should be the next Blog of the Moment, and if not, leave us a nominee in the comments (with the reasons it is worthy of such an esteemed honor). Who will be next? Based on past winners, it could be almost any old blog.

Well, did you find any of those costumes sexy? I kinda like the Chinese take-out girl, but then, I really love Chinese food, only shouldn't the model be Chinese? Oh, wait, it is a costume, so no, I guess not, anymore than you have to be a musical instrument to dress up in the "sexy guitar" costume.

I don't know what I'm going to do this year for my own costume. My plan was to sit around the house all evening with the lights off (hey, trick-or-treaters, it's a freaking depression, so no candy this year!) and watch videos, including It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown .

But maybe this story has inspired me to come up with a costume of my own. Something sexy and very scary (sexy cause it's young and has soft, smooth skin). Yes, I might just go scare the hell out of Francois Tremblay by showing up at his house in a Bret "Ginx" Alan costume.

While the movement across America to stop an out of control Congress in its tracks will likely lead to Republican victories and control of at least the House, the idea that this will somehow change the economic outlook for the better is conjecture. While our regular readers already understand we’re in a depression, most Americans have no clue of the severity of the problem.

A lot of personal economic decisions in the very near future will be made out of desperation. Congress, be it democrat or republican, cannot stop the coming wave. Whether we print more money a la Paul Krugman and Keynesian economics, or cut spending through austerity measures, the shit is about to hit the fan.-‘Austerity Will Hit America Like An Eight Pound Sledgehammer’

Even before the foreclosure problem appeared, the level of public distrust of our financial and political systems was approaching the pathological. It's going to get even worse when the true lesson of this episode sinks in. To wit: If you screw up big-time when you deal with a giant bank, you're toast. If the giant bank screws up when it deals with you, it gets a do-over.

Making the point the the banksters get away with murder, with maybe a little slap on the wrist from time to time for their transgressions. Ordinary citizens who are not "too big to fail", however, would have the book thrown at them for making similar "mistakes".

It's utterly shocking, even to a congenital skeptic like me, to see that giant institutions such as Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500), GMAC, and J.P. Morgan (JPM, Fortune 500) were allegedly using misleading affidavits to oust people from their homes. Employees of these institutions -- the "robo-signers" -- repeatedly misled courts by saying they had examined documents they hadn't examined and had reviewed documents they hadn't reviewed.

If you or I as individuals did that, we'd be kicked to the curb by the legal system in about two seconds. If we said that we hadn't wanted to spend the money to do things right -- the real reason that robo-signers exist -- it would take only one second for the system to whack us.

It's a bird, it's a (toy) plane, it's a ...cellphone! As CNN reported below, this video of footage from the premiere of Charlie Chaplin's The Circus went "viral" because someone claimed it shows a time traveler:

And the original George Clarke video, where he says:

This short film is about a piece of footage I (George Clarke) found behind the scenes in Charlie Chaplins film 'The Circus'. Attending the premiere at Manns Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, CA - the scene shows a large woman dressed in black with a hat hiding most of her face, with what can only be described as a mobile phone device - talking as she walks alone.

I have studied this film for over a year now - showing it to over 100 people and at a film festival, yet no-one can give any explanation as to what she is doing.

My only theory - as well as many others - is simple... a time traveler on a mobile phone.

Nobody could give him an explanation? How come lots of explanations popped up in the YouTube comments? This guy is like a Christian, "No one can explain the empty tomb (to my satisfaction), so Jesus rose from the dead," or "No one can explain where the universe came from, so God made it".

I like the explanation that the old man walking in front of the old woman is her husband, and she's talking to him with a hearing device up to her ear.

It has been suggested that she is holding "...a hearing aid, either a﻿ Siemens 1924 pocket-sized carbon amplifier or a Western Electric 34A audiophone carbon hearing aid, manufactured in 1925."

If this is correct then it all makes sense: the man in front of her is her husband, walking ahead of her while she waddles along behind, yammering away at him (you can see older married couples doing this every day). When she notices the film crew she turns to look at it; her﻿ husband just keeps going.

Or it's something else, but a cellphone? No cell phone towers in 1928, so how was she using it? A walkie-talkie? A Star Trek like communicator used to converse with a fellow time traveler in another location? But if time traveling tourists exist in the future, wouldn't they have something better and more advanced than a big thing you have to hold up to your ear?

Some faggot at Rutgers jumped off a bridge, so now every liberal is blathering about bullying. I thought it was an issue of privacy, dissemination of voyeuristic porn, and the intolerance that society harbors for gays, but apparently the problem is bullying.

New Jersey already has anti-bullying legislation on the books, but now they want to bolster it (it’s an election year, after all).

Gee, why would New Jersey be so sensitive to being mocked… I can’t tell whether it’s the fact that New Jersey is New York City’s trash dump, or because nobody there knows how to drive, or the pandemic of Italian guidos, or that stupid accent (yo, my state smells like gobidge), or the reputation Jersey girls have of being easier than a three piece puzzle.

I remember in Philadelphia, if you fail the driving test three times, they give you a New Jersey license. You know how a Jersey girl turns on the light after sex? She opens the car door. What’s the most popular form of birth control in New Jersey? Being gay.

New Jersey is the butt of more jokes than any state I know. Clearly New Jersey has every reason to be anti-bully. The only thing New Jersians hate more than all the jokes is that horrible smell that fills their home when they open a window.

I, however, take a firm pro-bully stance. You know what? Life is tough. It doesn’t get better. There are people who act less mature than most people I knew in high school running all over this country, and many of them hold elected office. This is a nation of retards and assholes, so you’re kidding yourself if you think any of this goes away. Your only choices are to ignore it or fight back.

And I mean actually fight back, not lobby some distant lawmaker to draft some piece of paper that just gets filed away somewhere. I mean insult that asshole who is making fun of you. His shit stinks like everyone else’s, and bullies are usually very sensitive to having criticism turned on them.

There’s no bully-crown that is held by one kid per school, ensuring him ultimate authority in bullydom. Anyone can be a bully. Even if you’re weak, or dumb, or small, or pastey, or you wheeze, or you sweat when you eat ketchup… whatever it is people are mocking you about, it’s something you have to learn to deal with for the rest of your life. Learn to cope with who you are and find the things other people are embarrassed about.

Or you can just live your life and ignore the jeers of people who mean nothing in the grand scheme of things. If you don’t think you can handle this, go find a fucking bridge.

Well… that explains everything. I mean come on, you can’t just stand by and do nothing. You had a bad back, you had to curb stomp the lady… rather than, say, trying to stop the man who was assaulting an innocent woman.

But wait, there’s more. Like any good right-winger, he’s demanding an apology for his actions. Like Dick Cheney marching his friend up in front of those cameras and forcing him to apologize to Cheney for being shot in the face, Tim Profitt is demanding that Lauren Valle apologize to him. Right-wingers love the idea of people apologizing for being a victim.

I suppose that makes sense… the old geezer does have a bad back, and she forced him to get all Gestapo on her ass by trying to suggest Rand Paul is serving corporate interests. Look Lauren, just say you’re sorry for suffering a concussion. You could have really hurt that old man’s foot as he was curb stomping you (the elderly have brittle bones, you know).

At this point, I want to make it very clear that it’s not like Rand Paul did this. Rand Paul would never forcefully detain a young woman…

The American people are experiencing financial death by a thousand cuts and most of them don't even realize it. The U.S. government, state governments, local governments and the financial elite are draining us financially in dozens upon dozens of different ways, and yet we have become so programmed to accept it that it just seems normal to us. 2011 is rapidly approaching, and a whole slate of federal taxes is scheduled to go up, state taxes are being increased from coast to coast, local governments are finding new and creative ways to stick it to us and the financial elite are becoming more predatory than ever. Meanwhile, the incomes of many average Americans are actually going down. According to the Census Bureau's annual survey of income and poverty in the United States, of the 52 largest metro areas in the nation, only the city of San Antonio did not see a decline in median household income during 2009. Tens of millions of Americans are flat broke and they are getting pissed off. According to a new poll conducted by CNBC, 92 percent of Americans believe that the U.S. economy is either "fair" or "poor". The American people desperately want someone to fix the economy, but instead our "leaders" are trying to come up with new and creative ways to drain even more money out of us.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

When in Atlanta the http://libertyontour.com guys got a tip about a pro-constitution rally being held at the state capital. They decided to attend. While there they handed out flyers with an excerpt from Lysander Spooner's "No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority" and engaged many present in conversation.

Inasmuch as the Constitution was never signed, nor agreed to, by anybody, as a contract, and therefore never bound anybody, and is now binding upon nobody; and is, moreover, such an one as no people can ever hereafter be expected to consent to, except as they may be forced to do so at the point of the bayonet, it is perhaps of no importance what its true legal meaning, as a contract, is. Nevertheless, the writer thinks it proper to say that, in his opinion, the Constitution is no such instrument as it has generally been assumed to be; but that by false interpretations, and naked usurpations, the government has been made in practice a very widely, and almost wholly, different thing from what the Constitution itself purports to authorize. He has heretofore written much, and could write much more, to prove that such is the truth. But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain — that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.

It’s only once in a while that a story this perfect comes around. It doesn’t surprise or shock me in the least, because I know this is the mentality of the hateful right and the Tea Party in particular. The hostility is palpable whenever those asshats are on camera. In fact, that’s probably why the cameras point at them so much. It’s a hell of a show.

I mean, honestly, a guy in a “We the People” baseball cap stomped on a young, defenseless woman being held down by another man. The same assholes who are online every day telling us the police are brutal Gestapo who abuse everyone are beating up women in real life in Rand Paul’s honor.

It’s things like this that illustrate so clearly that the problem we have today isn’t political or governmental, it’s human. These gutless bullies who pick on young women half their size and kick them while they’re down are trying to sell me on the idea that it’s the police who are brutal. Right...

The only thing more laughable than this notion is Rand Paul’s hairpiece.

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To be an individualist and libertarian is to understand that no one, anywhere, should ever be aggressed against by anyone, and that the state is the principal form of institutionalized aggression in our world.— Anthony Gregory

"Political tags, such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth, are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire."-- Robert A. Heinlein

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants."--Thomas Jefferson

"Our Bible reveals to us the character of our god with minute and remorseless exactness... It is perhaps the most damnatory biography that exists in print anywhere. It makes Nero an angel of light and leading by contrast." - Mark Twain

"The Bible tells us to be like God, and then on page after page it describes God as a mass murderer. This may be the single most important key to the political behavior of Western Civilization." - Robert Anton Wilson